Package: man-db
Version: 2.6.3-1
Severity: normal
Tags: upstream patch
mandb -p (which is run by the dpkg trigger) takes a lot of time to
run. I started looking at it (again) and noticed something peculiar
(edited a bit for clarity).
# mandb -p | grep "manual pages were added"
0 manual pages were added.
# touch /usr/share/man/man3
# mandb -p | grep "manual pages were added"
1101 manual pages were added.
# touch /usr/share/man/man3
# mandb -p | grep "manual pages were added"
1101 manual pages were added.
As I haven't done anything but update the directory's mtime, I would
have expected the subsequent mandb -p runs add no pages. I tested
this on a few Debian installs with various uses and saw similar thing
happen with their man directories.
I looked at the code and saw that mandb stores man pages' mtimes to
its database, but there's something off with the code and it gives
false positives on differing mtimes. I didn't come up with a fix for
that issue, but using man pages' ctimes instead I could do this:
Index: man-db-2.6.3/src/check_mandirs.c
===================================================================
--- man-db-2.6.3.orig/src/check_mandirs.c 2012-10-27 12:00:13.000000000
+0300
+++ man-db-2.6.3/src/check_mandirs.c 2012-10-28 00:31:35.200950213 +0300
@@ -316,12 +316,14 @@
free (lg.whatis);
}
-static inline void add_dir_entries (const char *path, char *infile)
+static inline void add_dir_entries (const char *path, char *infile,
+ time_t last)
{
char *manpage;
int len;
struct dirent *newdir;
DIR *dir;
+ struct stat filestat;
manpage = appendstr (NULL, path, "/", infile, "/", NULL);
len = strlen (manpage);
@@ -344,7 +346,10 @@
if (!(*newdir->d_name == '.' &&
strlen (newdir->d_name) < (size_t) 3)) {
manpage = appendstr (manpage, newdir->d_name, NULL);
- test_manfile (manpage, path);
+ if (last)
+ lstat(manpage, &filestat);
+ if (filestat.st_ctime >= last)
+ test_manfile (manpage, path);
*(manpage + len) = '\0';
}
@@ -508,7 +513,7 @@
if (!tty)
fprintf (stderr, "\n");
}
- add_dir_entries (path, mandir->d_name);
+ add_dir_entries (path, mandir->d_name, last);
MYDBM_CLOSE (dbf);
amount++;
}
Note that test_manfile calls stat on manpage too and those calls could
be merged but I left that change out of this, for simplicity's sake.
I'm happy to say that this makes the trigger work a lot faster. What
do you think of my approach to this?
-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/6 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=fi_FI.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Versions of packages man-db depends on:
ii bsdmainutils 9.0.3
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.46
ii dpkg 1.16.9
ii groff-base 1.21-9
ii libc6 2.13-36
ii libgdbm3 1.8.3-11
ii libpipeline1 1.2.2-1
ii zlib1g 1:1.2.7.dfsg-13
man-db recommends no packages.
Versions of packages man-db suggests:
ii chromium [www-browser] 22.0.1229.94~r161065-2
ii elinks [www-browser] 0.12~pre5-8
ii groff 1.21-9
ii iceweasel [www-browser] 10.0.10esr-1
ii konqueror [www-browser] 4:4.8.4-2
ii less 451-1
ii w3m [www-browser] 0.5.3-8
-- debconf information excluded
--
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